


hairy on the inside

by Crystalwren



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Animal Transformation, Body Dysphoria, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-26
Updated: 2014-04-26
Packaged: 2018-01-20 20:57:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1525436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crystalwren/pseuds/Crystalwren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Randall Tier spends his life looking for the right body.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hairy on the inside

**Author's Note:**

> Just so as you're aware, there's a brief mention of bestiality in here.

 

_“Your kind can't stomach hair, can you? Even if the worst wolves are hairy on the inside.”_

 

-‘The Company of Wolves

 

 

His body is _wrong_. _Wrong_. It feels like a suit, like an obscene costume worn to enchant and enthral the children. And he wears it _wrong_ , too, something loping in his gait, something predatory sparking in his eye. When he eats meat he eats it raw, or at least he did until a terrible infection of intestinal worms made him shit blood. If his body were _right_ , the juices of his carnivorous stomach would burn any worm eggs to mush. But his body is _wrong_ , and he needs must burn his food before consuming it, like any other weak human.

 

He seeks out communities online.

 

He discovers:

 

  *          Otherkin
  *          Animal kin
  *          Furries
  *          Animal role play



 

And it infuriates him. None of it is _real_. Women in kitty ears, men who think they have wolf tails. They talk about _fursonas_ and _transmutation_ and none of it is _right_ , it’s all _wrong_. It’s playacting, make believe. But he is _real_ , even if he is _wrong_ , and every morning he opens his mouth, believing that the bathroom mirror will show fangs, and every morning he is crushed to see useless, blunt human canines.

 

His skin doesn’t fit. He feels hairy on the inside but freakishly bald on the outside, as if his hide has been taken off of him and then returned, inside out.

 

Animal anatomy is the only thing that makes him happy. Fangs. Claws. Spinous processes. Sagittal. Rib cage.

 

He wants to eat meat. He wants his body to metabolise it raw. He wants his body to stop breaking down whenever he tries to eat nothing _but_ meat. He wants to be _right_. He doesn’t want to be _wrong_.

 

They send him to see Hannibal Lector when he is seventeen years old.

 

Lector sends his parents out of the room. He leans forward, fixing his reptilian gaze on his young charge.

 

“Why did you bite the throat of that young girl?”

 

He shrugs. He has no answer that can be articulated.

 

“Did you expect to see blood?”

 

Well, yes, he did. And meat, open, raw, living bleeding meat. Meat to be eaten because he is an animal, and carnivorous.

 

“You are naughty, Randall,” Lector intones solemnly, “Naughty...and careless. Next time, try not to get caught.”

 

In all his life, Hannibal Lector is the only person who comes close to understanding, to knowing, acknowledging, that his young charge isn’t human.

 

The young charge grows up. Occasionally he attempts mating with humans, but it feels _wrong_ , it feels like bestiality. Besides, the women every one of them fights him off when he tries to bite them, even if it’s only a little bite. But he still has urges, the desire to mate, to propagate the species, whatever that species may be. It’s the lack of fur, he realises, that’s the problem. He attempts to mate with a dog precisely once, an act that fills him with shame. Not because he’s really a human after all, because he’s not, he isn’t, _he is not a human,_ but for the simple reason that his body is _wrong_ for the bitch, the _wrong_ shape, the _wrong_ size, _wrong, wrong, wrong_.

 

But still. Pelage.

 

Now there was something _right._

Pelts become a passion for him. Seeking out the oldest hides in the museum, the tanned skins of the rarest, most obscure species. Hunting online for modern furs. He collects wolf, mink, cat, tiger, lion, dog, raccoon, wallaby, chinchilla, rat, sheep, alpaca, cow, horse, zebra, hog, possum, fox... it never ends. About the closest he comes to _right_ is bear fur. When he wraps himself in the pelt of a brown bear, the sheer weight of the skin, the fur crushing him, pushing him to the ground, he doesn’t feel trapped, but liberated. He finally feels _right_. Not perfect, but... _right_.

 

There is no modern equivalent to the way he is inside. A wolf is close, a brown bear closer, and he thinks that maybe, maybe, he’s on the _right_ track.

 

He makes his career out trying to figure out what type of animal he is. He’s very good at his job. Everyone says so. Holding the skulls of a cave bear and a dire wolf, he realises that he can’t find his animal in the natural world because his animal doesn’t exist; he’s a hybrid, the product of a monstrous and abnormal mating, like an obscene mutant hothouse orchid. If he wants a real body, the proper body, the _right_ body, he’s going to have to make it himself. It takes a year to learn metal working and hydraulics, and another three to make his _right_ body, to make it usable, wearable, wrap it around his freakish and deformed human body. And when it’s finally complete, it’s finally finished, he feels like he’s in his real body at last, the _right_ body, the body that he’s been searching for all his life.

 

He starts off on sheep first. Then cows. Horses, finally. His metal jaws make quick work of his prey. The howls, the snorts, the whinnies, the groans, the wet, helpless choking as lungs fill with blood, all of these noises touch him not in the least; he’s a _carnivore_ , he’s _real_ , he’s _right_.

 

When he’s finally ready to move on to humans, there is absolutely no guilt or grief.

 

Because he’s a carnivore.

 

Carnivores hunt.

 

And he’s in the _right_ body, at last.


End file.
